


The Raven Tree

by nevereverever



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Light Angst, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Past Character Death, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:28:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28103187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevereverever/pseuds/nevereverever
Summary: "I wish I had met you," Vilya said, soft as the grass beneath her, "I like your sister very much and I'm told you were very much alike. Bit of a spitfire, hard edges, soft heart. Protective." She looked up into the Raven Tree's branches and at the few birds sitting atop them. She smiled.In a plane that Vilya could not see, there was a man perched on those boughs with pale skin and dark hair and shimmering wings of raven feathers looking down at her
Relationships: Keyleth/Vax'ildan (Critical Role) (mentioned), Vax'ildan & Vilya
Comments: 4
Kudos: 83





	The Raven Tree

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I really am sorry about this one, I just couldn't get it out of my head. I hope you like post-canon Vox Machina angst because apparently that all I can write.

"Hello. I'm afraid we don't know each other. We never got to meet. I'm Vilya, Keyleth's mother. I suppose you thought I was dead. I'm not." She sat with her hands on her knees, facing the Raven Tree with her back to the village. She could feel her hands shaking.

"I wish I had met you," she continued "I like your sister very much and I'm told you were very much alike. Bit of a spitfire, hard edges, soft heart. Protective." She looked up into the tree's branches and at the few stray ravens sitting atop them. She smiled.

In a plane that Vilya could not see, there was a man perched on those boughs with pale skin and dark hair and shimmering wings of raven feathers looking down at her.

"From all the stories they tell, it sounds like you loved my daughter very much," she said, feeling the beginnings of tears in her eyes.

"I did," he said, knowing she could not hear, "I do." The wind rustled the leaves of the trees and one of the ravens flew off. Vilya's hands tensed into fists.

"And I thank you for that." She paused for a long moment like she was bracing herself for a blow. "They don't talk about you as much as they probably should. Not really. They talk about things that you all did together, the heroic moments, or the funny ones. They talk about Vox Machina, but it's been twenty years and-" she stopped abruptly and lets out a shaky sigh. "You're a shadow in their lives, all of them." 

She put a hand against the rough bark of the tree. The man in the branches flitted down closer to her, moving as if he weighed nothing at all.

"I was a shadow too, for a while. I still feel like one sometimes, when she and my husband are cooking dinner and they move around each other in the kitchen and there isn't any space for me. When she's healing one of the little one's scraped knees and I see so little of myself in her. It hurts to know I caused her so much pain, that I didn't get to raise her. She deserved a mother." A tear slipped down her face and fell into the dust at the base of the tree. The sound was so soft she did not hear it, but he did.

"It wasn't your fault, Vilya," he whispered. A leaf, bright red with the coming of fall, fell into her lap. She picked it up by the stem and twirled it between her fingers 

“She deserved so much that I never gave her- could never give her. Now I'm here and she's a full-grown woman, beautiful and powerful and wise, but she's heartbroken. She carries too many shadows.” She let the leaf go into the breeze, but for a moment the constant wind in Zephrah stilled and it fell to her side. She picked it back up and held it in her palm.

“She shouldn't have had to do any of it. If I had been stronger or smarter and finished my trial, she could have just been a happy little girl. It isn't fair that someone with such a tender heart should be broken like this. The world was so cruel to her.” Her voice cracked over the words like the sea over a rocky shore, and when she opened her mouth to speak again nothing came. The walls she spent so long building started to crumble, and she cried. The man came down from the tree to sit at her side. She couldn’t feel him, hear him, see him, but he spoke to her with all the softness he could muster.

“She was stronger than the world was cruel. She was wiser than the fates were capricious, warmer than the winds were cold, more radiant than the night was dark. She would not be herself without it,” he said. She crushed the leaf in her hand and held it to her heart as she cried, as she mourned a man she never met and a daughter who never was. He sat there with her.

“You did everything,” he murmured. He reached out for her. He could not touch her, but a beam of sunlight emerged from the clouds and fell on her shaking shoulders. She scrubbed her hand across her cheeks and sniffled. She tipped her head up and spoke to the leaves as if she could project her voice past them and into the ears of gods.

“If I could take your place, I would. You could have helped her carry her burden, I can hardly even understand what it is.” The man sighed though he did not have to breathe. Her words tugged at something inside of him, some deep sense of the injustice of all this that should have been lost to time and the will of his matron.

“She has survived something beyond my comprehension and she is more powerful than I could ever have hoped to be. She can tend a garden and summon a thunderstorm in the same breath, and I can't help but think that you would be so much better at making her happy than I am.” Vilya paused, hoping beyond hope that he would finally answer her and something would make sense. 

He didn’t know what to say to that. One of the ravens in the tree cawed loudly. She looked back down and shook her head.

“I don't know if you can hear me, or if you would want to. We never met, why would you- I'm probably just talking to a tree.” She laughed, her face still wet with tears. He tried to reach out again to brush one away and for a second, just a second, the wind almost felt like warm fingers against her cheek.

“I'm not sure what I hoped to gain from this, Vax'ildan. I can't tell you anything about her you don't already know.” She paused and put her hand on the bark again, ran her fingers over the raven feather embedded there. The tree was still young, it still had so much time to grow. 

“I'm sure I would have loved you. And when I pass from this life, I hope I will get the chance to,” she said. 

“Of course," he whispered into her ear. "Love my Tempest well, mother.” She touched her forehead to the tree, and he smiled as the wind blew in Zephrah, taking him with it.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me a note if you'd like! Love you, critters <3


End file.
